


Memorial

by Lyrstzha



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Episode: s01e20 War Zone, Episode: s03e01 Anne, Gen, Guilt, Running Away, past Buffy/Angel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if, when Buffy ran away to LA after killing Angel, she actually couldn't remember who she was or what she was running from?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memorial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunabee34 (Lorraine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/gifts).



_“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana_

 

She's pretty sure that her name had not been Anne before she got on the bus, but she isn't sure what it used to be. When the person sitting beside her asks, 'Anne' is just what pops out of her mouth first. The shape the name makes on her tongue doesn't feel quite right, but saying it brings her a sense of relief, like she's sidestepped a vast pit without falling in. She gets this feeling a lot as the days pass.

Anne fixes on the first help wanted sign she sees after she gets off the bus in LA. It's in a diner window, and she has no idea if she's ever waitressed before, but how hard can it be? The tips are pretty crap, but the manager's willing to let her get by on just those tips and not file any paperwork, which is definitely for the best, because Anne wouldn't know how to fill out the forms anyway. She supposes that she likely _has_ a social security number and driver's license, but she figures there's probably a damn good reason she got on that bus without ID. She's inventoried the few things she found herself carrying so many times that she could list them off in her sleep; none of it has a name or address on it. She must be running from _something_ , but she can't remember what.

She dreams sometimes, though. She doesn't exactly recall any of it when she wakes up crying, but aren't the tears themselves a good enough clue? Besides them, all she wakes up with is an overwhelming sense of loss and failure and the phantom taste of tarnished copper in her mouth. Whatever awful, shattering event lies across her past like an iridium layer, separating her into before and after, those orphaned echoes are bad enough. She'd rather not know where they come from.

But the days are mostly okay. She likes the quiet routine of them, anyway, especially as they start to add up. When she passes the first year mark, and she can look back to the same day last year and remember who she was and what she was doing, it almost feels like putting down roots. Plus, some of the customers at the diner are regulars, and that sort of makes Anne feel like she's part of something – almost like being part of a family, albeit as a distant cousin. It helps that some of her co-workers are okay, too. Especially Frank, who cooks on weekday afternoons and tells her she reminds him of his daughter; Anne doesn't know if she has a dad herself, but it's a nice thought. She even likes that the jokes he tells all the time aren't funny, because that makes him seem more fatherly somehow, in that dorky way that sitcom fathers on TV have.

“So, a Californian, a New Yorker, and a Texan walk into a restaurant,” Frank says to Anne on the first shift they work together, right after a particularly sour old man has run her off her feet and still only left her a nickel as tip. “And they sit down at a table and start looking at the menu, but the waiter, he comes over to their table and says, 'Excuse me, but there's a meat shortage, so we aren't able to serve the steak tonight.' So the Californian, he says, 'what's _meat_?' And the Texan says, 'what's a _shortage_?' And the New Yorker says, 'what's _excuse me_?'”

Anne, still gripping her nickel in a tight fist and not really in the mood to laugh, gives him a worn smile anyway.

“See?” Frank says, pointing at her face with a grin of his own. “I am the universal cure for the blues.”

And that _does_ actually make her laugh a little, and she slips the nickel into her apron pocket and lets go of the petty anger she'd felt heating her blood with a small sigh of relief.

Anne's not sure why her own anger makes her nervous, but she likes that Frank's good at taking the edge off of it.

This is probably why when she finds him out in the alley behind the diner with his throat ripped out and something still standing over him, she feels the rage flash through her blood like a striking match. 

“ _There_ you are,” the thing says, a little garbled around his fangs. “I knew I smelled slayer on this place.”

Something about the word 'slayer' makes Anne's anger flare even hotter, and she doesn't even think about what she's going to do next. Come to that, she's not even sure _how_ she does what she does next. Everything goes sort of fast forward blurry and reddish, and she's already slammed the thing down and smashed her fist into its face at least a dozen times before she even realizes what's happening.

“Heads up!” calls a voice from behind Anne, and she twists around without unpinning the monster beneath her; her hand snaps up to catch an axe before she registers what it is. It seems totally instinctive to swing it around and back to get a solid arc at the thing she's been pummeling. One powerful strike cleaves its head right off. A burst of ash explodes up at her, leaving her blinking grit out of her eyes even while she's rolling to her feet and dropping into a defensive stance.

“Whoa!” The man who'd thrown her the axe puts his hands up and backs away a few steps. “It's okay. I'm one of the good guys, not one of them.”

Anne opens her mouth to ask “one of what?” But suddenly she feels dizzy and hot and nauseatingly certain that this is one of those vast pits in her mind that she's been gingerly picking her way around since she got to LA. She lets the axe fall out of ready position.

“Thanks,” the guy says, also lowering his hands. “You swing a mean axe. Couldn't've done better myself.”

Anne blinks at him for a moment like a hanging cursor. “Thanks,” she finally echoes him. Belatedly, it occurs to her to offer him back his axe, which she does, flipping it around to hold it out handle first.

He takes it almost warily, looking at her with a speculative expression. “Ain't the first time you took out a vamp, not with moves like that,” he says with certainty. 

“I don't know what that means.” Anne shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot, like her potential energy wants to tip into kinetic but can't figure out which direction to launch into.

“So, you just happened to know how to take down a vamp, but you don't know what vamps are?” He frowns at Anne. “Hella lucky, then.”

Anne shrugs. “Guess so.”

“And you must be way stronger than you look.”

“Carrying heavy plates all day,” Anne offers quickly, not even sure what she's trying to cover for. “It's a great workout.”

“Uh huh,” he says dubiously, arching a skeptical eyebrow.

“What?” she demands defensively. “It is.”

The man throws his hands up, axe catching the faint light in a gleaming arc. “You know what? Fine. You wanna be mysterious, that don't matter. Not as long as you keep the sharp end pointed at these fuckers. You help keep the community clean, we got no problem with you.”

Anne shakes her head. “I don't want any trouble,” she says. “That's not what I came here for.” And she didn't even know that before it came out of her mouth, but now she does.

The man huffs a mirthless chuckle. “Don't matter what we want. Trouble don't care.”

Anne looks down at what's left of Frank. “Maybe,” she allows. “But it's gonna have to come looking for me.” She turns on her heel and starts back up the alley, already wondering how she's going to get in touch with Frank's daughter.

“Name's Gunn,” the man calls after her. “Trouble too big comes looking for you, you find me. We gotta stick together out here. Always more of them, not enough of us.”

“Yeah, okay,” she shoots reluctantly back over her shoulder, not meaning it especially.

And she keeps on not meaning it, though Gunn and his sister and their crew start coming around the diner a couple of times a week. They don't order more than coffee, but it gets to feel almost reassuring that Gunn's checking in with her like that; he doesn't ask her for help, but he always asks her if she needs any. Something about that feels surprising. 

At least, he doesn't ask until the day he comes in, fewer of his crew with him than usual, and they don't take a booth. Instead, Gunn pulls her aside.

“Wouldn't ask, but it's _Alonna_ ,” he whispers.

“Somebody took her,” Anne guesses.

“Vamps,” Gunn nods sharply. “Whole nest. We been fixing to wipe 'em out, but they came at us during the day.”

“I'm sorry,” Anne murmurs, squeezing Gunn's arm gently. She may not know him well, but she doesn't even know _herself_ well, so it doesn't seem so strange to feel for him. “You're going after them?”

“Yeah. Need all the help I can get.” He lowers his head a bit to get their eyes on the same level. “I know something happened to you. You don't wanna say, and I ain't gonna ask. But I never seen anybody throw a vamp around like you did. Whatever you got, I need it now. Please.”

Anne opens her mouth to find an excuse to say no, but what comes out is, “I can get Lana to take my tables.”

He face relaxes with obvious relief, and he looks younger. “Thanks. We'll take you back with us to our place to arm up, plan a little. But we gotta move fast as we can.”

Less than a half hour later, Anne is strapping stakes around her waist and testing out the balance of a sword with Gunn and his crew bustling around her doing the same. There's a kind of hunger and anticipation rattling around in her bones, like this is something that she's been missing for a long time without knowing it, which is nothing that she expected. Hasn't she been content in her quiet life? Hasn't she been glad to get away from whatever horrors lie in the past that she dreads remembering? When did this restless longing start to gnaw at her in spite of the dread, and why did she never notice it before?

That's when she feels a creeping sensation tickling in her gut, and she moves toward the stairs instinctively without knowing why. She runs up lightly, ignoring Gunn's call behind her. One of Gunn's guys is at the top on guard, fiddling with a crossbow; he turns as Anne comes toward him, then startles at the hand that comes around the corner to grab him. 

But Anne is there, gripping the hand and using her momentum to pivot, dragging whomever's attached to the hand with her and shoving Gunn's guy out of the way. The stranger comes, and all she gets out of the corner of her eye in that split second as she's turning is big and wearing black. He rebounds off the threshold as she bounces him against its invisible barrier, and she releases his hand and reverses her movement smoothly as he stumbles. On the return spin, she has one of the stakes in her hand; it lodges solidly in the middle of his chest with a sickening sound that feels far too familiar.

But then, for a stolen moment, they are just standing there, frozen in the instant between this world and the next. He glances down at the stake in his heart, then up at her with wide, shocked eyes. His trembling fingers start toward her face, but never complete the journey. “Buffy? What – ?” But the last word dissolves with the man who speaks it.

_Buffy_. _Buffy, Buffy, Buffy._ It tolls like a funeral bell in her head, and all the locked doors in her mind that she has been tiptoeing around these last couple of years fly open at once.

Buffy hits the ground hard with her knees, dimly aware that something formless and keening is tearing its way out of her throat. She has run and run, and yet here she is again, exactly in the same place she'd run away from. She doesn't know how he got here, how he came back; none of this makes any sense. This can't be real, this _cannot have happened to her again_.

“Anne?” Gunn asks softly from behind her. “You know that dude?”

One of her hands creeps forward on the floor into the pile of dust where Angel stood and sifts through his remains. Did she _know him_? How is she supposed to answer that? He clings to the skin of her shaking fingers like a shadow, and once again she will never be able to look at her hands without seeing his death there.

“My name is Buffy,” she finally says firmly, iron forged into breath.


End file.
